Bellshadow Bears

"If the hearth still smokes but the door’s grown moss, leave. If there's thorns in the chimney, run." -Old Ursi saying, carved into a burnt hearthstone in Waneclay Croft.

The Bellshadow Bear is a hulking, semi-supernatural black bear that appears in abandoned crofts, ruined cottages, and overgrown homesteads throughout Everwealth’s misty glens and forested hollows. Shaggy, soot-colored, and trailing the scent of old firewood and rot, it is named for the soft chime-like groan its movements produce, whether from bone, ash, or unseen bells no longer present. This bear does not stalk the wild. It waits in still homes where warmth has died, curling beside hearths like a terrible memory wearing flesh. When provoked, or when the fire is rekindled, it reveals its true form: jaws that split too wide, lined with thorn-grown gums, and shoulders sprouting brambles and blackthorn branches that twitch when the air warms. It does not kill to eat. It kills to keep the silence unbroken.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Outwardly, the Bellshadow Bear appears as an oversized black bear, but its anatomy betrays unnatural features. Its fur is thick and patchy, clinging to its hide in soot-draped tufts. Along its shoulders and back grow gnarled blackthorn branches, sprouting seasonal bramble-berries even in winter, their roots embedded deep into flesh and bone Its jaw is hinged beyond natural limits, capable of unfolding like a serpent’s, revealing a gullet lined with bark-colored fangs and sap-stained thorns. Beneath the fur, its ribs creak when it moves, emitting soft, bell-like noises that increase when angered.

Genetics and Reproduction

Bellshadow Bears do not reproduce in any traditional sense. They are believed to emerge from specific environmental trauma, typically when an ancestral home is abandoned in violence, famine, or betrayal. The hearth’s final embers mix with grief and natural magick, and something takes root in the soil beneath. Over time, the Bellshadow is born from this soil and ash as if the land itself remembered warmth and turned it into hunger. Because of this, no Bellshadow young have ever been found. They are said to be singular, each one unique to the ruin it claims.

Growth Rate & Stages

Seeded Dormancy (Years 0-10): Exists as tangled root mass beneath hearth or cellar floor, dormant but sentient. Awakening Form (10-30 years): Forms a crude, moss-coated bear shape that wanders briefly before returning. True Bellshadow (30+ years): Fully formed, intelligent, reactive; creates "nest" around hearth, begins consuming warmth, emotion, and intruders. Lifespan: Unknown, potentially ageless if undisturbed.

Ecology and Habitats

The Bellshadow Bear is never found in untamed wilderness. It exists only where civilization once lingered, particularly rural crofts, family homes, and ancestral holdings now reduced to moss and ruin. Its favored haunts are:

• Hearths that were extinguished in grief.

• Villages wiped out by famine or plague.

• Farmsteads whose last occupants died without rites.

Where it dwells, the air is still. Fires will not stay lit. Birds and small creatures avoid the area instinctively. Vines crawl across doors overnight, and visitors often feel watched even before the bear reveals itself. It does not range far, each Bellshadow is rooted to the home that birthed it.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Bellshadow Bears do not eat in the traditional sense. They feed on warmth, of fires, of bodies, of memory itself. Their presence leeches heat from the living, draining them slowly while lulling them into false comfort. Victims often sit beside the bear for hours before realizing they can no longer move. Its jaws deliver a parasitic curse: thorn-bursts bloom from the wound, and unless burned away, will root the victim into the ground like a plant. It does not chase. It waits.

Biological Cycle

Their activity follows emotional seasons rather than natural ones. Bellshadow Bears are most commonly encountered:

• In winter, when homes are cold and hope thins.

• After famine, when families flee and never return.

• During mourning, when grief hangs heavy and hearths are left to rot.

In spring, if unchallenged, it burrows into the ruined home itself, entwining with the thorn-covered structure. By summer, the croft may be completely overrun, alive, but hollow.

Behaviour

The Bellshadow Bear is eerily passive, sometimes motionless for days. It will only attack if threatened, or if someone rekindles a fire in its presence. Doing so is seen as a challenge, or worse, a violation. It does not vocalize. Instead, its bramble flowers open when it’s aware of intruders, and its glow pulses like a fire gone bad. When it hunts, it walks slowly, not stalking, but arriving, as if claiming what is already owed.

Additional Information

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

• Heat Scenting: Can detect even minute heat sources, breath, blood, ember ash, from a hundred feet.

• Memory Tracing: Drawn to homes with lingering emotional resonance; can follow the “scent” of grief or abandonment.

• Thornsense: Feels movement through bramble roots in a wide radius, like a spider sensing its web.

• Fire-Linked Awareness: Aware of any open hearths within its territory.

Scientific Name

Ursus umbrosanguis.

Origin/Ancestry

Believed to form when grief, abandonment, and broken hearth-spirits fester too long in forgotten places, the Bellshadow Bear is thought to be a magickal aberration, born of ruined sanctuaries and the vengeance of rooted land.

Conservation Status

The Bellshadow Bear is considered a cursed phenomenon, not a natural species. It is neither protected nor hunted, but shunned. In most regions, its appearance is treated as a spiritual warning. Old laws demand that its hearth be left cold, and its den untouched. However, alchemists sometimes seek its sap-ichor or thorn-bones, both highly valued in curses, blood-magic, or flame-warding charms. In rural villages, if one is believed to have formed nearby, families will light fires in all rooms for seven nights, sing old names aloud, and scatter salt and rosemary through the threshold. If the fire dims, it’s already inside.